The texts collected here were inspired by my own interests in medieval and early modern European education and the history of the book, and this has determined their chronological and geographical scope (from late antiquity through the early modern period, with a few diverting excursions beyond, and almost entirely European). The Past is, of course, much more expansive than what appears here, and I encourage all initiatives to Ask It.
By presenting the texts without a rigid chronological or topical structure, I am following the example of many of their sources. For one thing, it is difficult to assign material to a single time period when useful advice simply stayed around: Pliny the Elder proposed a garland of violets as a hangover remedy, and the recommendation still pops up now and again, probably to remain in circulation until the blessed day when mankind discovers a truly effective hangover cure. The excerpts here do not represent the first time their advice appeared in print (or in a manuscript), but they do represent a time when readers encountered it; by the same logic, the dates provided are those of the editions I consulted and not necessarily first editions (although their dates, along with information about translations, are provided in the notes).
The miscellaneous nature of the material, too, follows the example of its sources. A topical arrangement of material would be anachronistic, reflecting current divisions of knowledge rather than periods when music was a branch of math, say, and cookbooks told you how to condition your hair. And consider Thomas Lupton’s A Thousand Notable Things (1579), which gathers ancient and recent lore on all subjects, offering it up in delightful disarray. In the space of a page, a reader can marvel at:
• a technique to heal a wound with sugar and a pat of butter
• a story about a child the author met in June 1577 who “dyd eate the woollen sleeues that were on her armes, besydes that she dyd eate a gloue”
• a remedy for baldness (mouse dung, burned wasps, hazelnuts, vinegar)
• a foolproof way to make frogs stop croaking with a candle
As justification for my own jumbled organization, I cannot improve on Lupton’s own preface to his thousand notable things:
Perhappes you will meruell, that I haue not placed them in better order, and that thinges of like matter are not ioygned together. Truely there are so many of so diuerse and sundry sortes and contrary effectes, that it could not be altogether obserued. And in my iudgement through the straungenesse and varietie of matter, it will be more desirously and delightfully read: knowing we are made of such a moulde, that delicate Daintinesse delightes vs much: but we loathe to bee fed too long with one foode: And that long wandring in straunge, peasant and contrary places, will lesse wery vs, then short trauell in often troden ground.1
Happy wandring.